


They Were Roommates

by DrSinge



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Blink and you'll miss it, Emma's Just Living Her Best Life, F/F, I have no regrets, Regina Has No Chill, Roommates, Swan Queen Supernova 2020 (Once Upon a Time), Swan Queen Supernova Protostar Challenge (Once Upon a Time), The Evil Queen Squad Is Ready to Yeet Regina Head First into a Relationship, Unicorns, Very Brief 18 yr old alcohol consumption, Why is it always beige?, it's a little cracky tbh, like really, obnoxiously crunchy orange chips, swanqueen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26224660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrSinge/pseuds/DrSinge
Summary: The Mifflin dorm hall was known as the dwelling of Storybrooke University’s most studious students in on-campus housing. It had the earliest quiet hours, housed mostly upperclassmen, and was the one Regina Mills had carefully selected after two campus tours and several hours of thoughtful consideration. She frankly had no idea how her roommate could have possibly settled on the same hall.
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan
Comments: 34
Kudos: 173
Collections: Swan Queen Supernova V: Forever Starstruck





	1. They Were Roommates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrincessBread](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessBread/gifts).



> PrincessBread created an absolutely fantastic piece of artwork that I had the honor to write a fic for, and y'all should go check it out. I really did spend five minutes just appreciating the grass the first time I saw it. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank PrincessBread for the many memes she sent me. My SQ memes folder in particular has swollen considerably since we got matched for Protostar. And finally, thank you to the wonderful mods for making this event possible.

The Mifflin dorm hall was known as the dwelling of Storybrooke University’s most studious students in on-campus housing. It had the earliest quiet hours, housed mostly upperclassmen, and was the one Regina Mills had carefully selected after two campus tours and several hours of thoughtful consideration. She frankly had no idea how her roommate could have possibly settled on the same hall. 

_Crunch._

Regina glared over her textbook at the woman in question, Emma Swan. Regina hadn’t been a fan of her when they were in high school together, and she certainly was not a fan when Emma was sitting across their shared dorm and eating obnoxiously crunchy, orange chips. She watched her turn a page in her book and internally cringed at the orange prints left on the paper. 

They’d been living together for five days, and Regina was still wondering how they could possibly be paired by the roommate questionnaire. So far, the only two reasons she could think of were the algorithm had been faulty, or Emma picked the Mifflin dorm by randomly pulling its name from a hat. Of course, the latter would require some level of forethought. One would have to have a hat _and_ paper. Regina supposed Emma could have simply thrown a pen at a dorm pamphlet and settled on the hall it marked. Regina’s eyes trailed after the now empty and wadded up chip bag as it sailed across the room and landed squarely in the garbage bin. Yes, the pen method certainly seemed compatible with what she knew of her roommate. 

She watched Emma dust her hands off before rolling her eyes and turning her attention back to her textbook. It was just a few blissfully peaceful moments later that a rustling sound interrupted her concentration. She looked up again and found Emma opening a pack of dry cereal. Regina sighed. It was clearly going to be a long school year, and classes hadn’t even started.

~

The truly wonderful thing about Regina’s childhood friends was that all three of them were very rarely bothered by her, objectively, somewhat bratty attitude when she was displeased with something. The unfortunate thing about her friends was that when she was in one of those moods, that’s when they most enjoyed teasing her. Take for example, the first week of freshman year, when Regina was having lunch with Maleficent: “... and after that she got out _another_ package of those stupid chips. At this rate, her fingers are going to be permanently stained orange,” Regina finished recounting with a huff. Mal hummed from her place across the table. She was leaning her head against her hand and was watching Regina with a superior little smirk. A few seconds passed and then Regina prompted, “Well?”

Mal quirked an amused eyebrow, “Well, what?” 

Regina irritably stabbed at her salad, “It’s your turn to say something.”

Knowing it wasn’t at all uncommon for her friend to launch into a second leg of her diatribe on Emma Swan, Mal asked, “Are you really finished now?”

Still moving bits of lettuce around her plate, Regina answered, “Yes, I’m finished now.”

Mal lifted her head, checked the watch on her wrist, and announced, “Seven minutes, thirty-two seconds.” 

Regina blinked and looked back up at her dining companion, “I beg your pardon?”

“Seven minutes, thirty-two seconds,” Mal repeated, “That’s how long you talked about Emma’s eating habits.”

Regina gave a funny little jerk that sent a piece of lettuce flying off their table. “I was not talking about her for seven minutes.”

Mal nodded, “Correct, you were talking about her for seven minutes _and_ thirty-two seconds. It’s important to be precise.”

Regina felt her cheeks flush but did her best to ignore it as she argued, “I was simply complaining about the unfortunate roommate I’m stuck with, because we couldn’t room together.”

Mal shrugged, “I still think we made the right decision. Even if my roommate is a simpering twit and yours is the woman you’ve had a crush on since the start of high school.” Mal paused, looking expectant. Regina refused to rise to the bait, choosing instead to lift a delicate eyebrow at Mal in a is-that-really-the-best-you-can-do manner. She’d been (ridiculously) teased about being secretly infatuated with Emma far too many times to get riled that easily. Seeing that she hadn’t hit the right button yet, Mal continued, “Besides, if we lived together, you’d have to find a new best friend to complain for seven minutes and thirty-two seconds to about the way I eat ‘obnoxiously crunchy, orange chips.’”

Regina rolled her eyes but ignored the jab. “Cruella and Ursula manage to be roommates,” she argued, absolutely refusing to be distracted.

Mal held up a finger, “Ah but you’re forgetting a very important difference in the two situations.” She looked just to the left of Regina’s shoulder and raised her voice slightly as she said, “Cruella and Ursula are idiots.” 

“We heard that,” came from just over Regina’s shoulder, followed closely by two loud smacking noises as Cruella and Ursula plopped their trays onto the table. 

“You were meant to,” Mal drawled as the newly arrived pair took their seats. She leisurely leaned back in her chair, winked at Regina and said, “What I really want to know is if you heard the part about Regina spending seven minutes and thirty-two seconds explaining Emma’s eating habits for the past week.”

Ursula snorted as she unwrapped her silverware, “Please, not that again. Do you remember in high school when she spent fifteen minutes on the way Emma’s glasses slide down her nose when she reads.”

Regina’s looked rather affronted as she explained, “It’s not that difficult to fix! There was no reason for her to spend everyday pushing them back up her nose.” 

Mal seemed to be enjoying herself as she countered, “It’s also not that difficult to ask her to dinner instead of fixating on every single one of her little idiosyncrasies.” 

Regina felt her face heat again, “I do not want to ask her to dinner. I just don’t see why she has to be so-”

“Delicious,” Cruella suggested as she poured a smuggled flask of vodka into her orange juice.

“Aggravating,” Regina glared, “I was going to say aggravating, and you do realize it’s before noon, yes?” 

Cruella waved a hand in Regina’s direction like she was swatting at a fly, “I never worry about the details. It causes premature wrinkling.” She took a sip of her cocktail with a pointed look at Regina’s forehead. She set the glass back down and added, “Not to mention alcohol is the easiest way to stand rehashing your little crush on the Swan girl, for what? The hundredth time.”

Ursula snorted, “Try the thousandth.”

Regina very briefly considered flipping the table, just to force a topic change, but the damn thing looked like it was made of some sturdy, old oak. Instead she decided to try to reason with them--a fool’s errand if there ever was one, “You three just said I complain about Emma for concentrated chunks of time. That hardly seems to imply that I’d like to go to dinner with her.” 

“Yes, it does,” Ursula chimed without looking up from her fish sticks. .

“Well then maybe you really are an idiot,” Regina snapped.

Unfortunately, rather than deterred by her attitude, all three of her friends seemed quite amused by her waspish behavior. Cruella, always the one who seemed to enjoy teasing Regina the most, leaned forward and asked, “Tell me darling, in elementary school, did you ever get in trouble for pulling another little girl’s hair?”

Not expecting the question, Regina frowned, “Yes, why?”

Grinning even wider, Cruella practically purred, “Think about it, dear.”

Regina looked at Mal, who had been watching the conversation with a cheshire cat grin, with just a hint of pleading in her eyes, and it was enough to get Mal to lose the haughty edge to her expression. “I believe she’s trying to tell you it’s time to get off the playground,” Mal unhelpfully clarified.

It was certainly too early in the morning for Regina to try and understand her friends, so in an effort to cut to the chase, she groused, “Meaning?”

“We’re not five anymore,” Ursula supplied.

Cruella nodded in agreement and added, “So stop snarling at the poor girl like a child who has to pull another child’s hair to express their feelings.”

With a chuckle Mal leaned forward and hummed, “In short, learn to flirt without scalding Emma, dear.”

Of course, that was absolutely preposterous advice, since Regina wasn’t flirting. And even if she _were_ , if she truly wanted to, she could certainly woo Emma Swan without snipping at her. Regina could be charmingly polite, and suave if she so fancied. Yes, she absolutely could, she assured herself as she sat waiting for her intro to political science class to start. 

“Excuse me?” A male voice interrupted Regina’s thoughts. 

“What?” She snapped. She whipped her head to the side to see a thin redheaded man with thick glasses. 

Startled by her hostility, the man took a step back, “Nothing, I uh, was just going to ask if this seat was available, but I think I actually see a friend in the corner. Sorry for bothering you.” The man hastily backed away and stumbled towards another man who was watching his friend’s retreat and laughing loudly enough for it to carry across the classroom. 

No one else approached Regina about the empty seat next to her, which left her to stew peacefully until class started. At the top of the hour, the professor, Dr. Gold, gave a short introduction of himself and the class before beginning to hand out copies of the syllabus. Regina pulled out the online copy she’d already downloaded and highlighted, still quietly musing about what her friends had said. She supposed it may not be the worst course of action to try being friendly with Emma. Not to win the girl’s affections, obviously, just for the sake of making her living situation for at least the next year easier to bear. 

The professor cleared his throat, having made his way back to the front of the class and began, “As you’ll see on page one, I do not appreciate tardiness.”

At that moment, the classroom door was flung open and Regina’s wind-swept roommate appeared on the threshold looking like she’d run across campus to get there.

Emma blundered into the classroom with one strap of her backpack on and a rushed apology spilling from her lips, “Sorry, Professor. My last class was by the dorms, and we got out late, and I got here as quickly as I could but um...” She trailed off under Dr. Gold’s cold stare.

Letting Emma’s unfinished sentence hang in the air for a long, uncomfortable minute, Gold looked back at his syllabus and called, “Take a seat and don’t let it happen again.” Emma nodded and sank into the nearest chair. The chair right next to Regina, as fate-- that bitch -- would have it. 

Taking off her backpack, Emma finally seemed to notice who she was sitting next to and offered Regina a hesitant smile. Regina felt her face twitch in what she hoped was something resembling a reassuring smile, but given the way Emma’s eyebrows furrowed before she turned to face the front, it may have been closer to a grimace. 

Gold read through the rest of the syllabus without incident, the last page just being a breakdown of the class grading scale and point totals for the semester’s assignments. It had seemed fairly standard when Regina had first gone over it. She’d highlighted the due dates but nothing else had stuck out to her. Gold finished reading and looked around the class. Something about his expression made Regina want to fidget, but she forced herself to sit still. There was no reason for her to have such a reaction. However, as Gold paced to her side of the classroom, she couldn’t help feeling that something was about to go very poorly. 

“Now, I need all of you to pay attention. I do not enjoy repeating myself, so I’m only going to say this once. I will number each row either as a one or a two.” He glowered at the class before continuing, “It is a simple one digit number, and if you can’t remember which number your row is, save me and yourself the trouble and drop the class. Does everyone understand?”

There were nods throughout the classroom, and Gold quickly numbered off the eight rows. “Now if you’re a one, please look to your left, and if you are a two, look to your right.” Regina dutifully looked to her right and found Emma already staring back at her. “Now everyone say hello to your permanent partner for the semester.” Regina’s head whipped towards Gold as mutters filled the classroom. She rescanned the assignment page as she threw her hand into the air. 

Gold sighed as his eyes fell on her raised hand, “Yes, Ms…”

“Mills,” Regina supplied, eyes flickering over the syllabus for a third time.

“Very well, Ms. Mills. Your question?”

Confident that she hadn’t misread the page, Regina said, “There’s nothing on the syllabus about required group work.”

A snide smirk crept over Gold’s face, “Ms. Mill’s, please read the last line of the syllabus aloud for the class.”

Regina’s eyes jumped to the bottom of the page and she felt her heart sink. _The dirty rotten bast-_

“Today,if you please, Ms. Mills.”

Regina shot him a filthy glare before reading, “This syllabus is subject to change at any time, at the discretion of the professor.”

Gold leaned his hip against the edge of his desk, “The majority of you taking this class are either going into law, law enforcement, or politics. I, as head of the political science department, and the heads of the other two aforementioned departments have all received several complaints from the upperclassmen instructors that not a single one of the students has learned how to effectively work with others. This semester, we will remedy that.

“Now, some of you may not understand the importance of group work,” his eyes pointedly landed on Regina before he continued, “or why it would be required in fields as competitive as the ones most of you will be entering.” He looked around the class, like he was daring someone to ask why. When no one did, he explained, “There will be times in each of your fields when you must work with another person, which will require at least a basic understanding of the word cooperation.” His eyes again landed on Regina as he added, “I have a feeling that is a skill several of you have yet to acquire. So you will begin working on it this semester. I will take a list of the partners. And before anyone asks, no you may not switch, because the purpose of this exercise is to learn to work with another person, whether you like them or not. Every in-class assignment will be done with your partner, as will your semester midterm.” He held up a clipboard, “After I’ve taken your name and your partner’s you may leave.”


	2. Aww, They're Bonding

It was four weeks later, and Regina still wasn’t sure if being paired with Emma was a blessing or a curse. On the positive side, there were now ample opportunities for Regina to practice being nice to Emma, not that she’d ever been really rude to her face. At most, there had been a few instances when she was a little gruff with Emma, mostly because her head tended to be swept clean of it’s filter and memory of how to hold a normal conversation whenever she was near her. They’d never really even talked for an extended period of time before though, so those gruff moments were the majority of their interactions. They had had several classes together in high school, but they’d never been paired or seated next to each other. She had just always been aggravatingly aware of Emma whenever she was in a room, which made her quite annoying to Regina. That had fortunately tapered off a bit since becoming partners.

They didn’t necessarily talk a lot now, but they worked surprisingly well together as class partners. They usually were the first to finish whatever assignment Dr. Gold set and had a few minutes to chat. Emma was surprisingly funny. Even more surprising was that she seemed to find Regina funny as well. She also put up well with the things, in and out of the classroom, that many people might find odd about Regina, like her possessiveness of her goldfish, Henry. 

Regina kept him on a strict feeding schedule, and so far, she’d only ever missed one of his feeding times. It was due to the dolts in her group for another class showing up late to a group meeting. She’d had to stay two hours later than she’d anticipated and then hurried back to her dorm, feeling guilty about not feeding the little guy on time. 

Emma had been there when she arrived and smiled when Regina stepped through the door. “Hey, you’re back. I was wondering where you were.” 

Regina paused as she was taking her coat off, “You were?”

Emma pushed glasses up on her nose, “Yeah but, you know, not like in a weird way.” She cleared her throat, “I mean, you’re just usually home by now, and I noticed that you weren’t.” And it was probably a trick of the light, but it looked like Emma may have been blushing. Before Regina could decide one way or another, a movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. 

Henry was lazily gliding from one side of his tank to the other, and Regina stepped over to his tank. As she reached for the fish food, Emma called, “Oh, I fed Henry for you.”

She looked up at where Emma had moved to the edge of her bunk, “You did?” 

“Yeah,” Emma rubbed the back of her neck. “I know you like to feed him at seven but you didn’t show, and he looked hungry. I did all the stuff you do though. I gave him a drop of the fish vitamin stuff and read the back of his food to make sure I gave him the right number of flakes. His water temp is a solid 70.”

Regina tilted her head, mildly surprised that Emma had paid enough attention to know she checked the water temperature when she fed Henry. “Thank you, that was very kind.”

Emma nodded and pulled a textbook into her lap. She flipped it open and mumbled, “No problem, it was easy.” Although, Regina was fairly certain Emma had in fact been blushing by the end of that sentence.

There were also times where Regina wasn’t sure she understood Emma very well. For instance, once, halfway through the semester, Emma and Regina had been sitting in the library and working on their midterm for Gold. Emma had been in the middle of a sentence when she looked up and stared at the wall for several seconds before turning to Regina and asking, “Why do you think it’s always beige?”

Regina had looked up from her notes with a confused scrunch to her forehead, “Why is what beige?”

“The library walls. Every library I’ve been in has beige walls,” Emma explained, “Come to think of it, our dorm room is beige too.” 

Regina, never having paid much attention to library walls, shrugged, “Most public places probably prefer a neutral color.”

Emma went back to staring at the wall, “It’s not the only neutral color though.”

“I suppose not,” Regina agreed. Now more interested in watching Emma watch the wall than her notes, Regina asked, “What color would you have them paint it?”

Emma tilted her head, “Yellow might be nice. It’s sunshine-y.”

Regina glanced out the window towards the angry gray sky. “We live in Maine,” Regina pointed out, “Hardly the sunshine state.”

Emma shrugged, “That’s just another reason to paint the walls yellow. It brings your own sunshine.” Then she went back to her notes like she’d never looked up from them and made Regina start wondering about beige walls.

However, it wasn’t until a week from winter break that Regina decided being paired with Emma was definitely a blessing.They were sitting in the library again, this time working on their joint final, as Gold had decided the overall class cooperation skills still left something to be desired and extended the group work to include that as well. They had gotten much closer since the start of the semester, so much so that Regina had stopped noticing most of the things Emma does that she used to find irksome, like pulling out a bag of those orange chips she was so partial to. Regina only noticed she had a bag out now, because Emma was gesturing to her laptop screen with a twisted orange chip. For some reason, Regina now found this endearing instead of aggravating. 

In fact, the only thing Regina had never been able to let go of over the last few months was the way Emma’s glasses slipped when she was reading. Like they were doing now as Emma munched the chip she’d just been waving around and leaning down to check something in her notes. Before Regina could think better of it, she held her hand out and asked, “May I?”

Emma swallowed her chip and blinked at Regina’s hand, “May you what?”

Still holding her hand out, Regina expanded, “May I fix your glasses?”

Emma’s eyebrows furrowed. “What’s wrong with them,” she asked, as she pulled them off and placed them in Regina’s hand.

Regina pawed through her bag until she found the little tube she’d recently ordered online. She held it up and answered, “They keep slipping, and I’ve never understood how that doesn’t drive you crazy.” Regina uncapped the tube and rubbed the contents along the nose piece.

Satisfied that she’d fully covered where she needed to, she handed the glasses back. Emma put them on again and looked down. They stayed in place, causing Regina to give a smug little smile over finally defeating the damn things.

“Cool,” Emma grinned, “What is that stuff.”

“Nerd wax,” Regina triumphantly answered, “It’s specially designed to keep glasses from sliding down your nose.”

“Cool,” Emma amused herself for a moment by wiggling her eyebrows and scrunching her nose to see if the glasses would slip, but they still stayed in place. Smiling and still making faces, she asked, “Where’d you get that stuff? I didn’t even know you wear glasses.”

Regina felt her cheeks heat slightly, but probably not enough to be very noticeable. So as nonchalantly as she could, Regina said, “I don’t. I just noticed that your glasses seem to slip fairly often, and I thought you might like to fix that.”

Emma joked with a soft smile, “Thank you, I don’t think anyone’s ever paid that much attention to my eyewear before.”

Regina tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and went back to looking at her notes before responding, “You should thank my friends. They’re always telling me that I have an aggressive way of showing attraction. I’ve been working on that this semester.”

There was a very long pause where Regina kept reading, and she assumed Emma had done the same until she heard a croaked, “Attraction? You’re, um attracted?”

Realizing her mistake far too late, Regina tried to recover, “I believe I said affection.” She chanced a glance at Emma through her lashes, hoping that she would buy the lie and move on. But, as Regina had also discovered over the last few months, Emma could be just as stubborn as she was. And Emma definitely had that stubborn set to her jaw she got every now and then that told Regina there would be no wiggling out of this.

Emma proved her assumption correct as she insisted, “I’m positive I heard you say attraction.” 

“Think what you’d like, but that’s not what I said,” Regina snapped. Instantly regretting it. That was the one move she’d been trying to avoid with Emma all semester. She held her breath, hoping Emma might just let the incident pass them by. Several endless seconds ticked by, before Regina couldn’t take it any more and looked back at Emma, trying to read her face. 

Emma was biting her lip and had a similar expression to when she was carefully writing out a particularly important point in an essay. She finally gave up on trying to read Emma and returned to the safety of staring at her notes. “Regina?”

“Yes?” She responded, absolutely refusing to look up from the safety of her color coded highlights.

Hesitantly, like she was afraid of startling a deer, Emma began, “If you want to say no, you can, and we’ll pretend this never happened, but…” she heard Emma take a very deep breath before continuing, “Would you like to go to dinner with me?”

Regina was so surprised that she looked up to meet Emma’s eyes without giving herself permission to do so, “Like a date?”

“Yeah,” Emma was biting her lip again.

“But we’re roommates.”

“Yeah.”

“That could go very poorly,” Regina pressed.

Emma agreed, “Yeah, but there’s the chance that it could go very not poorly.”

Regina fiddled with the corner of her paper as Emma drummed her fingers along the table. Finally Regina broke in, “But I snapped at you.”

“It happens,” Emma shrugged, “I’m sure I’ll snap at you one day if we get past dinner.”

There was a hopeful glimmer in Emma’s eyes that Regina tried to focus on as she nodded, “Okay, dinner it is.”

Emma grinned and repeated, “Dinner it is.”


	3. Three Years Later

_ Three and a Half Years Later _

Campus was nearly empty. It was the last day of term and all but a few poor unfortunate souls had finished finals and headed home for the summer. Regina, of course, fell into the unfortunate souls category, but that was hard to care about when she felt relaxed for the first time in weeks, and the added benefit of being one of the last to leave was there was no line outside of the campus coffee cart, which didn’t hurt her mood in the slightest. She’d turned in her last final, and her graduation ceremony was scheduled for the next day. Her parents would be arriving in the morning, and she’d already read through and edited her valedictorian speech. All that was left to do was pack up her apartment, but that could wait another day or two. 

Today, she just wanted to enjoy her last long walk across campus, because it was lovely outside. The sun was low in the sky and casting a warm, honey glow over everything in sight. The landscapers had the lawn at a catalog-ready shade of green and the trees looked rather stately as they cast long shadows over the lawn. It was perfectly picturesque almost all the way to the parking lot. 

Nearly at her destination, she saw someone sprawled in the grass, interrupting the long stretch of green next to the sidewalk. Regina rolled her eyes, fully intent on leaving whoever it was in peace. It was probably a freshman if the carelessly thrown backpack and ridiculous print pants were any indication-  _ wait. _ The backpack was obscuring Regina’s line of sight to the person’s face, but there was definitely something familiar about the blonde hair fanned out across the grass. 

Regina came to a halt as she drew level with the person and made a quarter turn to face them fully. Yes, that was her girlfriend lounging in the lawn with her eyes closed, earbuds in, and wearing-  _ What is she wearing? _ \- Regina tilted her head, “Are those pajamas.”

A barely perceptible smile quirked the corner of Emma’s lips, “Maybe.” She cracked open one eye to find Regina staring down at her. Emma’s grin widened as she sat up on her elbows, “Are you wearing my Ramones concert shirt?”

Regina felt her cheeks flush slightly at the pleased expression on Emma’s face but made a valiant effort to ignore it as she gave the half-baked excuse she’d given herself that morning, “I wanted to wear my blue silk shirt, but  _ someone _ has yet to wash it after borrowing it.” 

Emma laughed as she flopped back on the grass. “Yeah, right. Cause your closet full of other silk shirts wouldn’t have worked.” She patted the grass next to her, “Care to join me?”

Regina looked down at her slacks before shaking her head, “Sorry, dear. These pants-” 

Emma hefted herself to her elbows again and interrupted, “Wait, hold that thought.”She fumbled with the zip on her backpack for a moment and then pulled out a little throw blanket. She spread it across the grass next to her and gestured grandly to the blanket with a teasing, “Your Majesty.”

Regina scoffed at the title but dutifully pulled off her heels and stepped on the grass, gracefully slinking down to sit on the blanket. The moment she set her purse down next to her, there was a sharp tug on her waist as Emma pulled her down to lay next to her. Regina’s arm did a complicated wave in the air to keep her cup from spilling all over the two of them. “Emma,” Regina protests, “You almost made me spill my coffee.” 

That made Emma open her eyes again and peer down at where Regina was resting her head against her chest, “You have coffee?”

Regina rolled her eyes and held the coffee up a little higher, “Yes, didn’t you see the cup in my hand?”

“I did not.” Emma wiggled her hand not wrapped around her girlfriend, “Are you going to share?”

Regina took a careful sip and shook her head, “Absolutely not.”

“Come on, you have to.” Emma weedled, “It’s in the apartment lease we signed, ‘you must always share your coffee with your very attractive girlfriend.’”

“Sorry, darling. I believe I would remember reading that.” Regina teased, holding out her coffee to Emma anyway. 

Emma gratefully took the coffee, “Is it really not in there?” she asked before taking a deep drink from the cup. She thoughtfully mused, “Huh, guess I’ll have to put that in our wedding vows.”

Regina stiffened.  _ Wedding vows? _ They weren’t- was Emma about to- Regina’s momentary surprise and mild panic vanished when she looked up and saw the grin playing at Emma’s lips. Regina lightly slapped her arm but was flooded with relief all the same, “You’re awful.”

A deep chuckle rumbled through Emma’s chest, “And you were afraid I was going to propose to you in unicorn pajamas.”

“I was not.”

“Really? You weren’t picturing telling our grandkids that you said yes to their grandmother while she was wearing a shirt that says, ‘Bitch, I ride a unicorn.’”

Regina narrowed her eyes up at Emma, “Your shirt does not say that.”

Emma wagged her eyebrows and pulled her jacket open wider, “Yes, it does.”

Regina’s eyes scanned the shirt before she chuckled and allowed herself to relax back into Emma’s side again. “You’re an idiot,” she affectionately teased. 

Emma laughed, “And I bet you would have said yes to a marriage proposal from the idiot in the unicorn crop top. So who’s really the idiot?”

“Still you. I believe that just makes you my idiot.”

“Touché.”

Regina’s fingers toyed along the strip of skin left exposed by Emma’s shirt as a comfortable silence descended between the pair. Regina was the one to break it, “I thought I was meeting you at home. I believe there was something about you holding a mandatory pizza and movie night I’m required to attend.”

“You are definitely required to attend,” Emma confirmed as she played with Regina’s hair. “We’ve just both been busy with finals, and now that we’re both finished, I didn’t want to wait to see you.”

Regina looked up at her and nuzzled a kiss just below her ear with a whispered, “Thank you.”

“Always,” Emma promised. 

A few more seconds of silence descended over the pair, while Emma layed contentedly and Regina nervously tugged at the bottom of the unicorn shirt. 

Finally gathering the courage, Regina murmured, “I would’ve said yes.” 

Eyes half lidded and still lazily running a hand through Regina’s hair, Emma asked “Said yes to what?”

A large area of the bottom of the unicorn shirt twisted around her fingers, Regina clarified, “I would say yes to you, even if you are in unicorn pajamas.” She tried to keep her tone light, but there was a layer of truth that made the words come out weighted. 

Not getting an immediate response, Regina hesitantly tilted her face up, hoping she hadn’t made a mistake in saying that out loud. Her worry vanished as she caught sight of the wide smile that had slipped across Emma’s lips. “Good,” Emma leaned down to press a kiss to Regina’s temple, “That probably means I’ll get an emphatic yes when I propose in a tux.” 

Regina curled closer into Emma’s side with an amused, “You’re ridiculous.” 

And ridiculous Emma may be, but her prediction was quite right when she proposed three months later.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Pyjamas [Protostar Art]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26072164) by [PrincessBread](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessBread/pseuds/PrincessBread)




End file.
